Film III Session 5
Session Duration Episodes 536-563, 28 episodes Cast of Characters and Players * Jim as Padme Amidala * Ben as Obi-Wan * Sally as: ** Yoda ** C-3PO * Pete as R2-D2 * Annie as Anakin * The GM as: ** Palpatine/Darth Sidious ** Clone Trooper ** Valorum/General Grievous ** Mace Windu ** Commander Cody Summary Everyone's present for the session, even Jim and Annie, but they're not speaking to each other. The GM starts up with where they left off, with Jim and his delegation confronting Annie and Chancellor Palpatine, but Jim declares that they're done talking and that he and his delegation have stormed out of the room. Annie tries to convince Palpatine that either Sally (as Yoda) or Mace Windu is the Sith lord in the Jedi Council, but Palpatine refuses to listen to any more of her paranoia, and orders her out of his office. Ben resumes his laser sword duel on Utapau against Valorum/General Grievous. He tires to move closer to strike. The GM informs him he'll need to roll 4 dice, 3 to dodge Grievous' remaining 3 arms holding laser swords, and a fourth to strike. Pete offers Ben his 4 "special" dice. Ben rolls them and they all roll high numbers (to Pete's disappointment since this is the first time this set of 4 "special" dice haven't rolled a 1, he was hoping to sabotage Ben) and Ben's able to Dodge the 3 arms and slice off one of them. Sally reports this as if Yoda were a news reporter. She reveals she's no longer interested in being a fantasy writer, and now wants to be a reporter. As Clone Troopers arrive on the scene, Ben uses Force Push on Grievous, sending him flying. Grievous tries to escape in a vehicle and Sally reports that the vehicle is a giant metal fun ball. Ben tries to dodge it by riding his varactyl, and the varactyl jumps down onto the wall of a cliff. Sally reports that Ben drops his laser sword. The GM concedes that Sally has a point, that the impact of the varactyl landing on the wall could cause Ben to drop the laser sword, and tells Ben to make a dexterity roll. Ben makes a low roll, and so really does drop his laser sword. Sally reports that it lands near a Clone Trooper who picks it up. At the Jedi Council chamber, Annie and Mace Windu contact Sally on Kashyyyk and Commander Cody on Utapau. Sally reports (literally) that the Wookies won the battle. Cody reports on what Ben has found out, including that Nute Gunray claimed he had sleeper agents in the Republic. Annie tries to hint to Windu that Palpatine could be a Sith lord, but Windu's too dim to get it. Annie leaves the Jedi Council chamber. Annie creeps up on Palpatine in his Chancellor chamber while the latter is looking at some Peace Moon plans. When Annie reveals her presence, Palpatine hastily shuts down the plans. Annie tells him that those plans Palpatine was looking at just now didn't look like the plans Pete recovered. She realizes that Count Dooku had only stolen a copy of the Peace Moon plans, that Palpatine had backups, and the real reason Palpatine had wanted the players to recover the plans Dooku stole was to keep Dooku from exposing them to the public. Palpatine points out that Pete had said the plans to the Peace Moon had shown it to be harmless. Annie replies that was after Nute Gunray had erased the superweapon shown in the plans (Pete's feeling especially vindicated that Annie realizes he didn't mess up the plans himself). Palpatine tries to deny that there's such a superweapon. Annie calls his bluff, telling him to then go ahead and show the plans he just shut down. Busted, Palpatine admits to the superweapon, capable of destroying an entire planet, but insists it's only meant as a deterrent, never to actually be used. Annie asks why he's kept this weapon a secret, and he says the Senate would never approve of it. Annie points out that she's married to a Senator, and tries to use that fact to blackmail Palpatine into giving her control over the military to hunt down the Sith, but Palpatine refuses. She tries to threaten him with her laser sword, but Palpatine stands by his principles. Annie backs down, admitting she respects the Chancellor's integrity, and leaves. Palpatine comments to himself that it's no wonder the previous Chancellor went nuts. Ben on his varactyl catches up to Grievous on his unicycle and leaps onto it, knocking the unicycle over, and spilling Grivous and an electro-quarterstaff out of it. Ben grabs the staff, as Grievous draws a blaster and fires at Ben. Ben Force Dodges the fire, and uses the staff to knock the blaster out of Grievous' hand. He attacks Grievous with the staff, but Grievous kicks him, causing Ben to drop the staff. Ben punches Grievous, and while the impact hurts his hand, it knocks Grievous' breastplate loose. Ben tears it open, revealing a heart beating inside. Grievous grabs Ben and tosses him over the edge of a cliff. Ben is only barely able to hang onto the ledge. Grievous declares he will remove Ben's hands because they're "wasted" on him. Ben realizes that Grievous has been grafting other people's body parts on himself. Grievous boasts that he has Dooku's heart, Qui-Gon's tongue, which he hired Zam Wessel to remove from Qui-Gon's corpse, and that he now also has Zam's eyes. Ben uses Force Pull to get the blaster he'd knocked out of Grievous' hand earlier and uses it to shoot Grievous repeatedly. Grievous gasps out one final, rambling monologue, and dies. Ben climbs up from the ledge and decides he'll now go to Naboo, but the GM can take no joy in a player finally doing what he'd wanted the players to do all along, since the GM is now grieving the loss of one of his favorite NPCs. The GM makes his own little funeral pyre of Grievous' character sheet. Pete notes that it's an awful lot of paper the GM's setting fire to. The GM explains that it includes Grievous' plot development notes. Annie approaches Mace Windu. She asks him if he ever dreams of death. Windu replies that he never remembers his dreams. She tells him how she dreams of Jim dying, and claims that she sees a Sith lord killing him. She hints that the Sith lord is Palpatine, but Windu fails to get the hints and decides that means the entire Jedi Council are Sith lords. Then Sally reports what Annie has been (obviously) hinting at: "Palpatine to kill Padme!" Now Windu finally gets it, and after a long pause, decides to arrest Palpatine. He asks Annie to come along, but after a long pause, she claims that she has to wash her hair. Windu decides that's a perfectly acceptable and legitimate reason not to come, and goes off to confront Palpatine. Annie starts to look up the Jedi Archives, but Jim calls for a time out to ask if this means that "Puppeteen" is the bad guy. He doesn't want to get this messed up, like he and the other players apparently did with that campaign Annie GMed. Annie gets into a brief argument with the others about that campaign. Finally, Jim asks her why she never tells him anything. So Annie decides to confide her plan to Jim: Palpatine is a good man, but she believes he needs persuasion. She's told Mace Windu that Palpatine is a Sith Lord, and he's just gone to try to arrest him. She's been sowing the seeds of this for a while. In a few minutes she'll show up and convince Palpatine that Windu is a traitor. Palpatine will have him arrested and the Jedi declared outlaws. Then she'll be second only to Palpatine. The power behind the throne. Jim decides that's an awesome plan. Jim asks how he can help. Annie explains she's looking up the Jedi Archives to see if she can figure out who the sleeper agents are that Nute Gunray mentioned. Jim casually asks if she means besides Mace Windu. This confuses Annie, so Jim casually points out how Windu's in charge of the Jedi Treasury which secretly funded the clone army, and is also in charge of the Jedi Archives which got corrupted by dogs. Annie, shocked, realizes that this would explain why Windu's so vague all the time. Pete, just as shocked as Annie, realizes this would also explain why he never remembers his dreams. Annie, stunned to realize that one of the people she's been accusing during this entire campaign might actually be guilty of something, runs off. Sally switches to playing C-3PO to interview Jim for the Droid Daily. Annie rushes to Palpatine's office, where she finds Mace Windu standing over Palpatine with a laser sword. Both men accuse each other of being a Sith lord, and enlist Annie's help against the other. Annie sides against Windu. Palpatine tries to attack Windu with Force Drain, but only gets himself hideously scarred before he realizes that he's been using it in reverse. Windu points out that it wouldn't work anyway since Force Drain only works on someone who's angry. Annie accuses Windu of being Nute Gunray's sleeper agent. Windu replies that that's not true, that's impossible. Annie tells him to search his feelings, he knows it to be true. Windu cries out a loud, "NNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Annie slices off his hand with her laser sword. Palpatine figures that should probably make Windu angry, and attacks Windu with Force Drain successfully. As Windu writhes in agony under the Force Drain, he suddenly remembers that he has been brainwashed by Nute Gunray into being his sleeper agent, that Gunray's behind everything, the clone army, the Jedi Archives, Windu's apartment block. Windu asks them to tell the Jedi Council he's sorry for his failure, and then he falls through a window to the streets below. Palpatine begins to worry that he made a terrible mistake. Annie claims this means the entire Jedi Council is in on it. Palpatine points out that Windu just apologized. Annie claims it was for failing to kill Palpatine. Annie's now able to use the past events of the previous two campaigns to convince Palpatine that the entire Jedi, except herself, have been plotting his overthrow. She tells him they'll need to use the Force to take control of the clone army to defeat the Jedi and the Trade Federation. Palpatine tells her to take a legion of clone troopers to the Jedi Temple and arrest the Jedi there. Annie wants to kill all the Jedi there, but Palpatine insists there might be innocents among the Jedi and that they each need to be tried. Annie concedes on this, but tells him the Jedi out in the field cannot be simply arrested by the clone troopers because the troopers' minds are too malleable. Palpatine reluctantly agrees to order the clones to kill the Jedi out in the field. The GM says it's running late, so they should end the session. A grumpy Sally switches back to playing Yoda to announce her final news report: "Scoop! Gamers finally notice child prodigy packed, ready to go!"